Wheat That Springeth Green

by J.F. Powers

  “Look, Joe,” Cooney said. “As far as I’m concerned, you can go right on wearing the hair shirt, although I still say it’s taking an unfair advantage, like wearing brass knuckles. But the idea these guys have—the reason you’re more unpopular these days, and of course the heart attack, coming when it did, is also a factor in that—is that you’re going against the Rector’s intention.”

  Joe thought about this for a moment. “I see,” he said, and went away to think some more.

  As it happened, he had to think for three days before he arrived at a firm decision. Then he had to wait for Wednesday afternoon to come, and when it did he took a bus downtown. He was carrying the hair shirt in the plastic bag. At the hospital he found the Rector in a private room, in bed with a paperback.

  “Ah, what’s this?” the Rector said.

  Joe, afraid the Rector was referring to the bag and was under the impression that it contained a gift for him, said, “No, Father,” which made sense only in the context of Joe’s thoughts. “I was just passing by, Father.”

  “Were you now?” replied the Rector in a marveling tone, and looked Joe in the eye.

  “As a matter of fact, Father, I wasn’t.”

  The Rector smiled, and Joe felt foolish but better.

  “Sit down, Joe.”

  Joe managed to sit down. “How’ve you been, Father?” Oh, great! “I mean, how are you, Father?”

  “I’m better, I’m told.”

  You’re grayer, Joe thought, and, the way he’d been going, did well not to say so.

  “What’s on your mind, Joe?”

  Joe looked down at the floor, where he’d put the bag because it called attention to itself in his hands, and then back at the Rector. “Remember, Father, I was supposed to bring you the hair shirt?”

  “Now that you mention it, Joe, yes.”

  “Father, I want you to know I did bring it to your office that morning, but you . . .” Joe felt foolish again.

  “I didn’t keep the appointment,” the Rector said, and smiled.

  “Not your fault, Father.” As if that needed saying. Joe reached down for the bag and stood up with it. “Father, the hair shirt’s inside,” he said. “And it’s nice and clean. I washed it.”

  “Not now, Joe. Not here. When I’m back. Soon enough then.”

  So Joe, about to place the bag on the bed at the Rector’s feet, held on to it. He hadn’t anticipated this development, but it didn’t divert him. “Father, I have to ask you a question,” he said, and got a funny look from the Rector. “It’s about your intention, as to the hair shirt.”

  “I thought you should stop wearing it, Joe, or I wouldn’t have asked for it. But in the circumstances—you’ve been wearing it, have you?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “And you want me to say whether you were right or wrong to do so?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Well, I can’t, in the circumstances, Joe. You’re the one to say. I will say I was worried about you, Joe. That question of yours at the lecture!” The Rector shook his head at the thought of it. “After that, I had to ask for the hair shirt. But now I don’t know. Things look different to me now, here. And you do, Joe. So I’d say do as you think best about the hair shirt. Wear it, or don’t. I trust you. Now I’m tired. You’d better leave.”

  Joe asked for the Rector’s blessing, knelt for it, and left with it, carrying the hair shirt in the plastic bag.

  In the following days—the Rector had died that night—Joe sensed that he was being blamed, as a puppy might be blamed for causing an accident in which it had escaped injury and someone had died, and that more guys than before liked the sight of him less. “When,” he imagined them saying, “when will he repent and take off the hair shirt?” For he hadn’t said anything to anybody about his visit to the hospital, and would not.

  Mooney, one of the few who still spoke to him, asked, “Are you getting anywhere, Joe?”

  “Can’t say I am, Chuck.”

  “Still wearing it?”

  “Yes.”

  “But not at night?”

  “No.”

  “That could be why you’re not getting anywhere, Joe. Ever think of that?”

  “Yes.”

  Yes, Joe had thought of that—oh, not as a cure, as Mooney meant, but as a pointer to the nature of his failure. He was, by the standards of saints, too fastidious, he knew—not enough of a slob. Why, for instance, should guys going about the corridors in their bare feet, or in their socks, which was somehow worse—why should this bother him so much? He kept his slippers handy by his bed and wore them or his shoes, preferably his shoes, when he went into the corridors. Yes, that could be his trouble—in a sense, the reason for his failure. Even if he did wear the hair shirt day and night—and he could—what about his feeling for others, his fellow men, who, next to God, should be his first concern? The seminary was a community, and a tight little one at that, and just wasn’t the place for all-out mysticism, for growth in holiness beyond a certain point —a low point by the standards of saints. No place he’d ever be, no parish, would be the place for that. And just this, for him, knowing what he did about the life of the spirit (not much but something) and not being able to give himself to it—wouldn’t that be a hair shirt of sorts? The Rector could have been wearing that kind for years day and night—probably all old priests did—and Joe, in feeling its prickliness already, before he was even ordained, was ahead of his time, he thought. Maybe it had been foolish to hope that he could go all the way, could get in touch with God directly, to think that he could bypass humanity, but he wasn’t giving up yet. No, he would continue to wear the hair shirt (unless asked not to by the new Rector, whoever he might be), would wear it during the day and wash it at night, until it wore out. If, by then, he was still not getting anywhere, he would simply make do with the hair shirt that so many were wearing.

  5. ORDAINED

  JOE HAD BEEN in the congregation the last time a new priest celebrated his first Mass in the parish church. That was some years back, but there hadn’t been a change of pastors. So Joe—and doubtless Toohey—knew what to expect when they reported to the rectory that Saturday night, to hear Father Stock’s arrangements for the next morning.

  “Now, you, Michael”—Toohey—“will have the ten o’clock, and you, Joseph, the eleven. And as is the custom here”—and, to Joe’s knowledge, nowhere else in the diocese—“a special collection will be taken up by the new priest, or priests. What I mean is, since you’ll serve each other’s Mass and are both priests—don’t worry, I’ll make that clear to the congregation—server will help celebrant take up the special collection. That way, we’ll save time. Any question?”

  Just one, Joe thought, Why?

  “No questions. Good. Now, right after the regular collection (to be taken up by the ushers, of course), the two of you’ll come down from the altar. The communion rail gate will be open, an usher waiting for you there with the baskets. Celebrant takes one, server the other. Celebrant does one side of the middle aisle, server the other. Now you’re at the back of the church—go over to the side aisles, celebrant to one, server to the other. Remember, the two middle sections are wide and you’ve only done half of these—you still have the other half to do from the side aisles. (I’ve known ushers to forget this.) But don’t start at the back of the church, don’t come up behind people. Go to the front of the church and work back as before, so people can see you coming. The same when you do the side sections—go to the front and work back. When you’ve done those sections, come up the middle aisle together. Leave the baskets at the communion rail, on the other side, the altar side. Don’t worry, someone’ll come out of the sacristy and take the baskets away before Communion. Well, that’s about all. Any questions?”

  “Just one. Why?”

  “Why, Joseph? Why what?”

  “Why should we take up the collection?” Joe looked to Toohey—foolishly, he saw—for support.

  “‘We’?” said Fa
ther Stock. “Does Joseph speak for you, Michael?”

  “No,” Joe said, dissociating himself from Toohey before Toohey did it for him. “I don’t speak for myself, either. I speak for the Church.” Wham!

  From the walls of Father Stock’s office, the photographs—mostly group pictures of clergy at class reunions and annual retreats, but a few individuals, bishops and popes—watched and waited, as Joe did, to see what would happen next.

  Toohey stood up. “I’ll run along, Father, if that’s all.”

  Father Stock nodded. “Be in the sacristy early tomorrow, Michael. Good night.”

  So Toohey, who was being sent to Rome for further study, which could mean he’d be a bishop someday, left, and Joe, who was being sent to a parish as a curate, which could mean he’d be a pastor someday, sat tight.

  Father Stock answered the phone—“Eight-nine-ten-eleven-it’s-in-the-parish-bulletin”—and hung up. “All right, Joseph. I’m listening. Speak for the Church.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, Father. But for us to take up the collection is to cheapen the Mass and the priesthood, I say.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Well, I would, and I don’t think I’m alone.” The clergy on the walls, even the bishops and popes who’d frowned when Joe spoke for the Church, were now all for him, especially the dead ones. “Father, won’t it look like we’re cashing in on the occasion? Or that you are?” Wham!

  “I’ll make it clear that you aren’t.”

  Joe had to like the man for that. Even vice, it seemed, in this case greed, could bring out the good in people. But the man was still wrong. “Father, maybe I shouldn’t ask this, but what do you—what does the parish, I mean—stand to gain? Three hundred dollars? Four hundred? Five?”

  Father Stock seemed to think it a fair question, no more than one priest might ask another, and replied with unconcealed regret, “Not five.”

  Joe was reluctant to go on, to say what he had in mind, afraid the man would be stung by it and sting back, which was how Joe himself might respond to what he had in mind—which, though, was well calculated to free the man’s will (temporarily) from its long enslavement to merely monetary considerations, enabling him not only to do the right thing but to profit by it. How often, here below, did such an opportunity arise? “Father, I have some money from my folks to buy a car—I’ll need one now that I’m ordained—but I don’t care what I drive. So what would you say—what would the parish, I mean, say—to five hundred?”

  Father Stock said, gravely, “The parish is always happy to accept an offering made in good faith, without qualifications. Be in the sacristy early tomorrow, Joseph. Good night.”

  Joe was in the sacristy early the next morning, before Toohey, and put away the vestments for Father Stock’s assistant, who’d had the nine o’clock and who, on leaving the sacristy, said, “Don’t take any wooden nickels.” But Joe looked on the bright side and hoped that his proposal—his exalted but not exaggerated regard for the Mass and the priesthood—had disturbed Father Stock’s sleep, had perhaps so disgusted the man with himself that he’d decided to call off the special collections, or, if not, to employ the ushers. It even occurred to Joe, when Father Stock and Toohey entered the sacristy together, that Toohey had already been told the good news (that the special collections were off, at least as far as the new priests were concerned), and that the situation, though it could perhaps no longer be improved by an offering from Joe, was still intended to teach him a lesson in faith and hope, in both of which he’d been found wanting, as he would in charity too unless he acted blindly, swiftly, before it could be construed as payola.

  “My offering, Father. It’s made in good faith, I hope, but anyway without qualifications.”

  Father Stock accepted the unsealed envelope with a nod, but didn’t peek inside or pull out the check, jump up and down, and yell “Yea!”—just put it aside, on the counter of the many-drawered cabinet in which vestments were kept flat, and got busy with the water and wine cruets, topping them up.

  Joe—he’d expected something more reassuring than a nod—slipped into his surplice and cassock. He’d brought his own, rather than take a chance on what the sacristy might stock in his size, Men’s 36 short, and maybe wind up in snotty, not to say boogery, altar boys’ issue. And before Father Stock, now lighting candles on the altar, returned to the sacristy, Joe asked Toohey, “Did the man say anything about the special collections?”

  “Grow up,” said Toohey, the fink.

  Father Stock returned to the sacristy, checked his pocket watch, and gave the word. “Now.”

  Server left the sacristy, ringing the bell in the pierced brass globe by the door (but not pulling it down), and led celebrant to the altar, “Introibo ad altare dei,” and so the ten o’clock began.

  Celebrant, like server, had practiced saying Mass in the chapel at the sem, but celebrant, unlike server, was a born master-of-ceremonies type, his command of rubrics daunting in the classroom, likewise his quarterbacking, his finger-snapping at rites in the chapel, and so celebrant was in his element.

  When it was time for the sermon, celebrant and server settled down on the sedilia, while preacher (Father Stock) came out of the sacristy and climbed into the pulpit. He read the announcements, the last one to the effect that both celebrant and server were newly ordained priests and former members of the parish—nothing about special collections. The sermon, though predictable (happy the parish that gives God and the Church two new priests in a single year, their high calling a difficult one in times like these), was, like the announcements, suspenseful, but like them, in the end, gratifying—nothing about special collections.

  The Mass resumed, with celebrant still doing fine, with server, though, distracted by the sounds of the regular collection, never having heard those sounds—the scrape and shuffle of ushers’ shoes, the rustle and clink of dough—so clearly before.

  After the ushers retired, there was silence in the body of the church—gratifying to server. Father Stock had returned to the sacristy after the sermon, but he was one of those pastors who, when not conducting services themselves, are all over the place, opening and closing windows, shooing standees into pews, checking the front steps for smokers during the sermon, and evidently he’d left the sacristy by the outside door, gone around to the front of the church, and reentered it there, for server could hear him making a disturbance, crying, “The new priests will now take up a special collection. I’ve asked them to do this. So be generous, good people,” whereupon server turned away from the altar (but so that it was hardly noticeable that he had) in an easy, flowing movement, and saw an usher with two baskets moving up the middle aisle, and heard celebrant, now alongside him, facing the other way (server was facing the altar), whisper to him, “Let’s go, buster.”

  So, coming to the usher, celebrant took one basket, server the other. While celebrant went down one side of the middle aisle, doing it, stopping and starting, server went nonstop down the other side—he hadn’t planned this, or this—holding a hand to his mouth as if sick and about to be sicker, and kept going (“Now you’re at the back of the church”), an usher relieving him of the basket and pushing the inner door open for him, into the vestibule.

  He ran down the stairs there, shoved the fire door open, and was in the dark tunnel that led to the school, the tiles amplifying and multiplying the sound of his passage so that he didn’t know until he stopped to open the door at the other end, and the lights came on, that he was not alone.

  “Joseph!”

  He kept going, the fire door taking its time closing behind him, now in a corridor lit only by night lights, and with a number of doors to choose from, he chose boys, rather than the obvious but daring alternative, and in darkness ducked into the nearest stall, bolted the door, and in the act of stepping up on the toilet, an old-style institutional high one, was nearly thrown by the skirt of his cassock, hiked it up, stood, and then crouched down on the seat.

  Footste
ps in the corridor, coming in, lights going on.

  “Joseph?”

  Silence.

  “Joseph!”

  Silence.

  “Joseph, I know you’re in there.”

  Silence.

  “Joseph, you should be ashamed of yourself.”

  Silence.

  Footsteps going away, lights left on.

  He wanted to come out, the sooner the better, but not too soon. When he did come out, all the way out, into the corridor, he was expecting to meet the man there, but did not; in the vestibule then, but did not. Rather than call attention to himself and, possibly, distract the congregation further, he went out the front door and around to the sacristy, certainly expecting to meet the man there, but did not. Probably, in view of where and how server had last been seen, it was a pleasant surprise to the congregation when he came out of the sacristy and took up his duties again.

  Joe had expected—and wanted—to meet the man in the sacristy after Mass, but did not. “What happened after I left?” he asked Toohey. “Have to do it all yourself, or what?” But Toohey gave Joe the silent treatment, and moved away when Joe tried to assist him in unvesting. So Joe, minding his own business, made the change from server to celebrant—could have used a little help with the alb and cincture. By that time, Toohey had left the sacristy in his new—too new—black suit for the church lawn, where he would be giving his blessing to those near and dear to him (and to those who made a point of collecting the blessings of new priests), and where Father Stock would be playing the part of the popular pastor he wasn’t, when he should have been in the sacristy clarifying the situation for Joe, or Joe for him.

  What was the situation now? Had the man, after what had happened at the ten, changed his mind? Was loath, though, to admit it, being a pastor? And hence his absence? Or did the envelope (it was still there on the counter) mean something—that the situation was unchanged? The same again at the eleven? If so, now was the time to have it out with the man. Look, Father, better call off the special collection at my Mass, or let the ushers handle it. Otherwise I’m not going on. Wham! Now, now, Joseph. Now, now yourself, Father. Though small for my age, I’m a big boy now, a priest, no less. If you want to take this to the Chancery, Father—well, I wish you would. Actually, I’m the one who should. Wham! Whether I will or not, depends on what happens at the eleven. I’ll wait and see how it goes. O.K., Father? [Toohey returned to the sacristy and selected a surplice and cassock from the stock there—no problem, he was average.] Comparisons are invidious, I know, Joseph, but look at Michael, here, he’s not complaining. Michael’s a fink, Father. Michael sucks, Father. And what about . . . No, say nothing about the offering—it spoke for itself. And nothing about the man’s breach of faith—too vague, that, but not the man’s obduracy and greed. No, say nothing about them—they spoke for themselves. But have it out with the man, clarify the situation, while there was still time. Yes, but how? Where the hell was the man?